One of the most common mistakes made when creating sales copy or marketing messages is focusing on the "features" of a product or service instead of the "benefits".
Benefits offer solutions to problems that your market are trying to solve, and appeal to the emotions that motivate people to buy. Features on the other hand are often technical and irrelevant.
A perfect example of this is the mini-infomercial for the Ninja Master Prep Blender. While searching for a new blender (I burnt our old one trying to make hummus), I was debating between the Ninja Master Prep and the Magic Bullet.
Both looked nice, were around the same price, and could make the same drinks and foods.
After watching the marketing videos for both I new that the Ninja was the one I wanted to buy. Not only was the Ninja larger, but look at how happy the people in the video are! They are making frozen cocktails at poolside, who wouldn't love that?
Watch the video below closely and notice how an amazing picture is painted of backyard parties, cocktails, easy to make snacks and more.
The 2+ minute video spends only a few seconds listing the products features. Most of the time is spent feeding your brain images and thoughts of delicious drinks and snacks that can be created easily and instantly.
The first minute of the video is packed with nothing but benefit after benefit listed in short and easy to understand sentances. Some of the benefits that I caught while watching are:
The features are only covered for a few seconds of the video, and are mainly used to support the blender's benefits.
Scruptious, Delicious, Fresh, Instant, Powerful, Creamy, Premium, Healthy, Natural.
I ended up buying the Ninja Master Prep Blender, the amazing marketing video said I had to. ;)
Have you been focusing on the features of your product or service instead of it's benefits?
I build stuff, like Narien, the Useragent API and the Email API